291. The Tainted Greenfields I

291. The Tainted Greenfields I

291 - Greenfields VIII

The Purple Moon of the Three Ringed World

The four domain holders landed on the purple moon, and the sensation was immediate.

Core. Lumoof said, but he didnt really need to say it. All the domain holders knew, it was similar to the time when they reached the Core of Tropicsworld. There was no doubt, no uncertainty.

Just merely stepping on it they felt the core attempt to make a connection. For the rest of them, their domains blocked it. but Lumoof allowed it through, so that I could speak to it.

The feeling of a million thoughts seeping through his feet, and somehow the million voices coalesced into three distinct voices, yet they speak as one. The mere contact flooded me with visions of the Three Rings, of a world once without the plague of the demons.

Of a world when the Purple Moon did not release bursts of energy to cause the monsters to run amok.

Visitors. How- strange.

The voice spoke through my mind immediately, and by now, I was quite used to the presence of such ancient things. Hello. I am Aeon, from another world.

We have not had visitors since the long drift apart.

There was a long pause, but I said nothing, because I felt its probing senses. Cores, from what I could tell, were not evil. It was looking for things around me, and its energies moved.

I can sense the vague remnants of my fellow Cores in your being, their power subsumed into yours.

I wondered then whether those were my clones.

Are you here to claim us? Like the foul constructs?

No. I answered through the avatar form. With things like the Core, I decided honesty was the best policy. They were in some ways, sentient machines. I come to destroy them, as requested by one of the gods.

So you are a claimant either way. A less destructive one.

I could feel Lumoofs intention to respond negatively, but again, Ive talked to enough cores to understand that their statements tend to be more pointed.

If that counts as claiming, then yes. I will establish a presence in your ringworlds, and then use it to mount a counterattack on the demons. I said plainly through our mental link. The domain holders stood on the purple rock, and the entirety of the rock was this realms planetary core.

It just didnt take the form of a planetary core, but instead placed itself out of reach of the demons by existing as a moon.

What will you do to our children?

The cores created and took care of each of their inhabitants. In that way, each native is a child of their core. Still, I was not sure how to answer them. They will live. Prosper, perhaps. But live.

I felt a probing sense, as if it tried to understand where and what I had done. It somehow traced my flesh across all the worlds, yet not through me, but as if it were droplets of rain flowing down the leaves and barks of a tree.

Yet. Protectiveness. This was a protective core. A world that wanted to keep its children alive.

Altered forever, but alive. Our voice, if our children believe.

I felt a sense of acceptance, that my presence would be tolerable. Acceptable. The cores voice vanished.

We were still standing on the core. The core refused to entertain us further, as I felt the Will retreat back into the depths of the Core. I could force it if I plant a clone here.

But would I be better than the demons that way?

I think of planet cores, or actually, these realm cores as the center of each world. It is not the sun like our old worlds, but instead, these worlds are as if medieval beliefs where Earth was the center of the universe was true. Well, almost every one, except for this one. I had many questions about the design and creation of this world.

We looked back at the Three Rings. From this vantage point, it was as if the three rings moved around us. We glanced at the sections where the three rings intersected one another. There were six intersection points, and at each of these intersection points were beams of light that connected one ring to another, a place referred to as the ladder.

It allowed the natives to move from one ring to another, and it was how all three rings are connected, even if one didnt have magic.

I suppose we should just move on. Stella said. Or step into the demon worlds linked through the rift gates.

This world has two demon kings. Edna countered. From the purple moon it was surprisingly easy to find the demon king, because its presence was not obstructed by other things, and there was a straight line from the purple moon to the sun-facing side of the rings.

And this world is a long way from being captured. Stella countered. Its only issue is that Hawa cant send anyone over anymore, and anyone Hawa sends need to send enough to deal with two demon kings.

Lumoof looked at the rifts, and the paths through the stars. Let us hit the other worlds. We have a mission. This world can wait. The locals look very cozy and the demon kings seem content to wait.

Why dont we just take a tour, pay a visit to the demon kings and just see what it was up to? Edna smirked, and it made all the other three domain holders stare at her.

Youre serious.

Yes. Why is it not doing anything? Dont you want to get more data points?

But this link was not a one-way link, and in older boarfolk that controlled more demons, the demons influence also corrupted them, and turned them into almost-demon like creatures.

This is like Aeons mana overwhelming, but far more specific. Lumoof observed them from our hidden location. The tendrils were visible to me because of our spiritual vision, but to normal mana sensitive folk, they would feel as if there is a haze of magic emitted out of the boarfolk.

The boarfolk created a society of sorts, small cities made of boarfolk and their enthralled demons. They were able to control weaker demons, but from what I could see, not a single demon champion.

Instead, we followed the footsteps of the stronger boarfolk and observed that their base abilities were similar to animal tamers. They controlled the demons as their pets, and empowered their pets to do the fighting. Maybe they even were beast tamers at one point, but then turned their talents towards the demons.

Unfortunately, this link would be supercharged whenever there is a demon king present. A link that would corrupt them.

In short, when a demon king arrives into this world, the entirety of the Boarfolk suffers from demonic corruption, and transforms into a demon. This process would strangely reverse itself once the demon king dies.

Not all boarfolk transformed into the demons, like the children, and the boarfolk constructed special locations to house their young boarlings during the demon years, supported by a group of boarfolk that did not control any single demon.

They essentially sold themselves to the demons. The demons spared the boarfolk, because of the demonic corruption through their mental link. I would love to capture them and study how their mental link worked.

It should be possible for me to create more powerful versions of the boarfolks demonic control, and turn the demons against itself. Though, looking at how the demons mana worked, its likely such a thing would be outright rejected by my domain holders, unless the circumstances truly demanded it.

As of now, the world is still relatively stable. The rifts have not yet opened, but there was a glowing path in the skies above. The demon king was coming soon, and war would break out.

The boarfolk always invaded the rest of them, and so the other two races erected massive fortifications along the border.

But weve seen enough. We would send Valthorns here to understand them in detail. It was time for the domainholders to keep moving.

***

Ninth Peripheral World

The Tale of the Two Continents

The portals opened, and Edna landed on the roof of what seemed to be a heavily populated city. Kafa followed.

Crowds. They saw crowds, and everyone lived their lives. It almost seemed like none of them worried about the demons.

Well. This doesnt look like a demon world. Kafa laughed after a week of traveling. It was just more and more people. It was just a world with a lot of humanoids. Humans, lizardfolk, dwarves, elves, centaurs. It had most of the types of people, and yet they were all trapped on this massive continent-sized island.

An island that clearly didnt have enough resources to meet everyones desires, and so they fought each other over what little they had. The land was mediocre, the metals were mediocre, and the magic in the air was thin.

It was a massive continental island, home to hundreds of millions, and not a single demon in sight. There were few forests in this world, instead, everyone lived in cities, or in the case of the elves and dwarves, turned forests into cities.

Farmland was also plenty, but unlike the other worlds, the farms here were heavily worked. They could feel the presence of many effects and abilities trying to force more output out of their limited farmlands.

A large, heavily populated world with a scarcity issue.

But only on this continent. Edna and Kafa knew the world was much bigger, and so they used magic, and traveled.

Then they discovered a few more islands, with more resources, but infested with monsters.

And even further away, another full sized continent overrun with demons.

It was as if imagining Treehome, in a situation where a demon king stuck to one continent and never left it. The humanoids claimed one continent for themselves, and the demons claimed another. The continent of demons was densely covered with demons of varying strength, and the demon king was a gigantic three headed demonic elephant that was already digging into the ground.

In a decade or two, it would completely dig into the core, and this worlds way of life would change forever.

The rest of the smaller islands were just overrun with magical creatures, and this was where the humanoids ventured for wealth and resources.

But the great demon continent remained forever a land none dared touch. A land of death and destruction.

They referred to it as the cursed continent.

I couldnt help but feel a tinge affected. That was what they called the Central Continent, once.

Well. Kafa and Edna landed on the island, and Kafa looked at his fellow warrior. This worlds not in trouble. Not yet, anyway.

Seen enough? Edna smiled after about a month of travel.

Kafa sighed. Theyve largely formed an assessment in that month. The great part of this world is its population. If our goal as an institution is to truly collect talent, then a significantly larger surviving population is more likely to produce the talent we need.

Outside of the population, I suppose you are right. Lets go to the next.

Each world had their own demon kings, and each had their own ticking timer. Some had more time, some had less.

We would likely need to do a full sweep of all the worlds, clean it up for demon kings, and then decide where to properly set up base. There were six more worlds to go.